Thursday, June 23, 2011

Pegging

I’m on the road this week, mailing this in from a hotel room in Ohio, so I’ll keep this a bit short.

Secretary for Two, my latest book, was just published by Loose Id on Tuesday. It’s my first ménage, and that was an interesting challenge. For one thing, it’s pretty far outside my experience. I don’t doubt there are successful three or more partner relationships working in the real world, but the ones people I know have been in have not had especially happy endings. I found that as I wrote the novel that I really believed in this particular HEA, however, because I thought each of the protagonists had needs that were met best in that relationship.

This is the second time that I included a pegging scene in a Male Dom/fem sub romance. The first was in Pushing Limits, where it was being done by a secondary character, to another secondary character.I hadn’t actually heard the term pegging until a couple of years ago, but the concept was familiar, a woman wearing a strap-on fucking a man. For some reason I find this incredibly hot, at least in fiction. I think one of the reasons is because a little bit of turning the tables helps emphasize that I don’t write Male Dom/fem sub romances because of some belief that women are inherently happier on the bottom. And as a related point, I want to subvert the idea that penetrating is inherently dominant behavior or that being penetrated is inherently submissive. I like making things complicated, even while I love the fact that a D/s relationship can be so very simple and straightforward and without the “I don’t know what do you want to do?” aspect that many vanilla relationships have -- or worse, the unwanted and inexplicit power exchange that causes one partner to take control and the other to be resentful.

Anyway… pegging. Hot or not? And I’d be particularly interested in what women who see themselves as strictly submissive have to say, because I’d call myself a switch and I’m sure that influences my perspective, but if that’s not you don’t let that stop you from chiming in.

I find it hot in fiction. It's something I've done in the far far far distant past, long before I met my husband. I enjoyed it back then, but it's nothing I have any desire to do now. Good thing, too. My husband would not be amused at even the suggestion of it.

I do enjoy seeing the idea of the Top being the one being penetrated and the submissive the one doing the penetrating. Not in a role reversal, but because that's what the Top wants to happen, so that's what happens. In exactly the way the Top says it should happen. Yeah, that works for me in fiction.